Dirty Cops, Dirty Prosecutors, and now, Dirty Judges

I’m not here to talk about the facts inferred in the title, but our incessant impatience that it all hasn’t been laid bare for us so far.

There are several reasons, some fact-based, matching hard evidence to hard law to hard rules of criminal procedure, this latter only a few insiders such as Andy McCarthy know well. I’ve tried cases in federal and criminal jurisdictions, but would never claim to be knowledgeable about current criminal procedure in any jurisdiction. I just know it’s there.

But you don’t have to be any kind of legal expert to have watched a few “Law and Order” episodes and to know that every DA’s worst nightmare is to run across a 20-year cop who suddenly shows up in a case as being dirty; for having planted evidence or taken bribes. On-the-take lawyers in the DA’s office are far fewer, and judges on the trial bench even more rare, but each calls down a thunderstorm of troubles for the institution and the people on the top floor who have to deal with it.

Using the dirty cop as an example, the front office of the DA’s office must first, before proceeding with any public charges, or plea offers, review every previous case or bust the cop was involved in and consider whether those previous convictions might not also be compromised. Once the cop’s name goes public, defense lawyers and the usual gaggle of sometimes politically-oriented NGO’s will come out of the woodwork, asking for everything from judiclal review, an appeal or out-and-out dismissal.

You don’t have to be especially legal-savvy to understand this, Just recall some old “Law and Order” episodes, because they covered the full array of the title; dirty cop, dirty lawyer and dirty judge.

Say the police detectives, Lenny Brisco and Mike Noth, find that a 20-year veteran had planted evidence. These good cops takes this to the Lieutenant, who then takes it to the chief prosecuting DA, Ben Stone, who then must take it to the city District Attorney, my favorite, the good Adam Schiff, not to be confused with the bad Adam Schiff from California,

The Good Adam sees the problem right away; political, legal, and institutional. He has to determine whether the 20 -years’ worth of busts and convictions can be overturned because of this recent revelation, so, if possible only has his two-person team scour the past cases to see if they may have been compromised. many hours. There would have been dozens in which the bad cop testified and his report was a part of evidence.

Because there are time limits in bringing an indictment, the DA’s may have to call in extra help from outside, which creates other problems. Whispers and leaks. (I’m sure you understand this, today.)

People may consider this a CYA exercise, and it often is, but the prosecutors have an affirmative duty, as in exculpatory evidence accidentally left in the evidence room versus the more commonly-believed intentional overlook, to take this before the court themselves, A 20-year cop suddenly discovered to be a dirty is a kind of exculpatory evidence and duty falls first on the state to rectify it.

Once that cop’s name is revealed everyone who has a client sitting in stir upstate in which that cop was an investigator, will make some motion; rehearing, appeal, new trial, and the local media will play a major part in the theater.

All we’re talking about here is why it sometimes takes so damned long to get a case in front of grand jury.

With the FBI and Department of Justice, and to some extent other government agencies, this problem become magnified ten-fold when the dirty cop, the dirty DA and the dirty judge are all found on the Top Floor, all or almost all, appointed by the President. Politics.

In virtually every decision made on the top floor of the FBI and DOJ has an element of criminal intent, at least in the citizens’ eyes, for every decision has a political component. Even the Good Adam Schiff was viewed this way by much of his public. And as we know, even the rank and file, over the years, takes on a political color and bias for the simple reason that virtually no university graduates any student that has a deep grounding in the simpler notion s of citizenship, what we used to call Civics. From GS-6 to GS-15 that bias generally leans Left.

Consequently, since Ronald Reagan at least, chief executives and their appointees, have walked into hostile political territory.

And proving crimes from the top are more difficult than bribes and shakedowns at the bottom, for they not only are almost entirely crimes of motivation, but a deeper, almost psychological motivation, very difficult to prove. The best proven to catch them is through perjury or making false statements, sometimes considered “process crimes”.

This explains much of the kabuki we’ve been watching the past several months.

Peter Strzok, a non-lawyer, in recent testimony almost blurted out the famous Bart Simpson line “You can’t prove it!” because all his motivations are in fact deeply imbedded in psychological compartments where degrees of bias are difficult to separate. This is why we have such a dislike for hate crimes in this country, for they are all so politically colored, usually toward only one political definition of “hate”

But Strzok is wrong. It can be proved. And probably will.

When Adolf Eichmann was captured and executed, he suffered the same fate as did common ordinary prison guards from the Nazi death camps. They were all hung. Yet his crimes were so much larger. He was a “senior executive” in the SS, not some common private too old and slow to fight at the front. And both used the defense “I was only following orders”. History doesn’t report whether the Israelis noted the difference, and “spiced up” Eichmann’s hanging, to make it more painful, but several hanging judges in the American West, e.g. Judge Lynch (hence the name) at Ft Smith, Arkansas, and Judge Roy Bean were both said to have ways to pave a really unlikeable man’s road to Hell a little less humanely. The things they could do with three different sizes of manila rope. (If you’re a Denzel Washington fan, in his first “Equalizer” film, he clearly distinguishes between super-evil Russian mobsters and their guards and underlings in the ways he dispatched them. He even let one cop gone-bad go to jail.)

My point in all this is that the types of charges all the FBI-DOJ principles may ultimately face, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, Andy McCabe and Sally Yates, and certainly the Awan family, as well as Clapper and Brennan and a host of other intelligence agency higher-ups still being looked at, is that as with the good Adam Schiff at the DOJ today, Jeff Sessions, has to consider all the good innocent cops and lawyers whose careers may be ruined just by having their names appear on a investigation report or trial record, alongside any of those names included. The Awan’s probably dirtied the entire Democrat Party Congressional membership, including crimes they may not even have committed. Even the bad Adam Schiff.

Just think about it. It’s not as easy a ride as many of you think. And in the end, without our knowledge or permission, as the good Adama Schiff was known to do, several cops who should’ve gone to jail for 25 years, will plea out to 12-15 instead just to save the DA the torture of making an offer of proof implicating innocent agents.

Again, think about it. Don’t get greedy, and stop being impatient. It isn’t seemly. This will never be perfect, and may take years.